


Distance

by dewfast_dewfurious



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Blow Jobs, Breathplay, Cynical, M/M, POV Multiple, Semi-Public Sex, Under-negotiated Kink, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, and then sex with cynicism in the background, anger issues, mainly just cynicism with sex in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:35:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29151336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewfast_dewfurious/pseuds/dewfast_dewfurious
Summary: Shane fucks Sam in the JojaMart bathroom as yet another desperate attempt to escape the tedium of his pathetic life.Sam fucks Shane in the JojaMart bathroom to let off some of the pressure of holding everyone else together and keeping up his happy-go-lucky front.So what do you do when your least-shitty coping mechanism isn’t enough to distract from your problems anymore?
Relationships: Sam/Shane (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to get dark(ish) and cynical and smutty to balance out the fluff in all the other stuff I’m writing :)
> 
> Other tags: things that can be interpreted as disordered eating, S/M dynamics, also just like the typical canonical Shane stuff with vague suicidal ideation etc.

Shane wasn’t sure he could take another minute of this.

Shorts around his ankles, the clink of Shane’s belt buckle sped up as he intensified the steady rhythm he was pounding into Sam.

The next shower over splattered out an uneven spray of water that Shane knew from vivid memory was needle-sharp and a few degrees warmer than lukewarm in the summer heat, even with the tap turned all the way to cold. They always kept it on when they did this to disguise any noise, but now it was making the air even more stuffy and muggy than usual.

He let out a frustrated huff, not caring if it was audible. But if Sam heard, he either mistook it for just another pant-moan-gasp, or he straight up didn’t care.

Shane dug his fingers harder into Sam’s hips. His fingertips slipped a little from the sheen of sweat between them. At this, Sam adjusted his position braced against the wall with a deep moan from the back of his throat.

Well, at least Sam was feeling something anyway.

The only reason Shane even _did_ this was for the brief moments of time he didn’t have to think anything or feel anything except the sensations of fucking his brains out or – sometimes and – getting his brains fucked out. It was only Sam by way of opportunity; he was just there: required exactly zero effort to find whenever he needed a quick fuck. It was something different from the same gray tedium that hung around the edges of his vision at all times.

And why not, he supposed. There were worse things Shane could be doing after a shift. It was sure as hell better than the alternative: a crowded Friday night in the Saloon, where it would be impossible to completely blur himself out the way he really fucking needed right now. Plus, this particular distraction came with the bonus of no hangover and not much of a comedown.

But lately it never seemed like he could get to the point where it was _enough_ anymore. A feeling that was beginning to stalk him through every aspect of his life. It was an ever-deepening pit. Shane was always sure satisfaction was right around the corner: just a bit more and then the hole would be able to close up; just a bit more alcohol – sex – food – sleep – alcohol – sex – food – sleep – alcohol – alcohol, alcohol…

It was a chore to have to down a drink before his coffee in the morning in order to wake up and even remotely function at work, and it was a chore that he was doing _this_ every day they both worked closing just to feel _something_. ~~~~

Just like every other thing in his life he’d started out thinking he’d had control over.

But Sam apparently needed these locker-room sessions just as much as he did. Hell, Sam was always the one waiting around for Shane while he finished up the manager’s checklist. He still wasn’t sure what Sam got out of it.

The back of Sam’s neck was blotchy red, the way it always got.

 _‘Always,’_ Shane echoed the thought back to himself derisively. Why had this happened enough for there to be an _‘always’_?

He could feel the twitching movement of Sam’s arm as he jerked himself off at a furious pace in a rhythm discordant with Shane’s thrusts. Sam let out breathy grunts that were not particularly attractive, and a bead of sweat rolled down from Sam’s armpit, down his side, and onto Shane’s hand. He watched it as indifferently as he watched his gut bump into Sam’s back each time his cock shoved into him.

The dull ache was starting up again in Shane’s head. He needed a drink. And for Sam to be close to finishing up here.

“ _Harder_ ,” Sam was saying, in an annoyingly petulant tone.

Shane clenched his jaw and channeled his irritation into grabbing Sam by the hair and giving that little punk everything he had. Sam sucked air in through his teeth as the hand braced against the wall curled into a fist.

 _That enough for you?_ Shane thought resentfully.

When Sam had turned up for his first part-time shift, he was bouncy, baby-faced, with a sickening idealism and more energy than one human man should hold. Shane used to have to endure Sam’s chatter about his music for what seemed like every minute of the six hours a week Sam worked, but ironically, as Sam added more shifts here and there, Shane was forced to hear about it less and less.

The occasional bags under Sam’s eyes eventually became ever-present. The attempts to put a rebellious spin on their uniform petered out. Week after week, month after month, it went on until suddenly he was seeing way too much of himself in Sam.

He supposed that, as his manager, Shane was just another part of the slow machinations that were inevitably grinding Sam down into the same condition Shane was in now. Shane had had to watch himself slowly be used up and drained dry, and now he had a front-row seat to the same happening to Sam in real time. Was it twisted? – it was twisted – but he couldn’t lie: there was a certain smug satisfaction seeing it happen to someone else. Shane was a loser, but not an _exceptional_ loser. It could happen to anyone; it was just bad luck.

And, fuck, it was worse that they’d both _tried_. They were both here because they moved _back_. Sucked back down here because they failed to make something of themselves anywhere else. A failure that didn’t even sting anymore.

Shane couldn’t make himself feel bad for the kid, though. Welcome to the real world.

Over Sam’s shoulder, the vacant smile of the JojaCorp logo stared back at him from the Joja-brand tiles.

If that wasn’t a fucking mood killer.

Shane tried to keep going, but now that he’d seen that stupid, smug face, he couldn’t _not_ see it anymore. He rolled his eyes, pulled out, and turned Sam around roughly by the shoulders. Kicking his shorts off to the side, he dropped down. The tile was particularly brutal on his knees today, but Shane welcomed the pain; at least it was a change from the ache in his back and feet and calves from being on his feet all day.

He didn’t waste any time getting to work on Sam’s cock: running his tongue up its length, circling the head with his tongue, sucking him down with his hand wrapped around the base, then taking the entire length in his mouth.

The way Sam really filled up his mouth as his cock slid down his throat actually did manage to be satisfying, still, despite everything.

Sam’s low, stifled moan escaped into a gasping cry when Shane flexed the muscles of his throat and simultaneously massaged the underside of Sam’s cock with his tongue. Shane did find himself enjoying Sam’s reactions in moments like these, when he seemed reduced only to sensations.

Sam drove his hips forward with each of Shane’s steady strokes, and Shane met him each time, pushing back into it. The only thing keeping him from staying like that with Sam’s cock shoved down his throat, balls deep, was needing to back off enough to take a breath.

Though the next thing Shane knew, Sam’s fist was in his hair, his other hand at the nape of Shane’s neck, and when Shane had Sam all the way down the back of his throat again, Sam’s hand tightened and held Shane there a second or two longer than Shane might have normally stayed there. When Sam finally released him, Shane backed off quickly, needing to take a few seconds to gasp in some air before taking him in his mouth again. _Fuck_. He _needed_ Sam to do that again.

Shane looked up at Sam and held his gaze. The chillingly cold look in Sam’s eyes sent an electric current down Shane’s spine. It made him want to know just how far Sam would go with this.

Shane was bearing down again to the base of Sam’s cock, each stroke raising the suspense of when the next time Sam would hold him down, deny him air. The blood pounded in Shane’s cock from how hard he was. And then on his next downstroke, Sam’s hands were there again, trapping him for a few more seconds without oxygen than his brain had calculated for.

Sam was holding him a little longer every time, and Shane’s head started to swim with the dizzying effects of oxygen deprivation and being so hard his cock ached.

The last time, Sam pinned Shane as he continued to barely perceptively pulse in place as far as his limited range of motion allowed until his lungs ached. There was a second, two seconds, three, that Shane really wanted it to be time for a breath, could feel his body involuntarily try to gasp for air in a sort of spasm, but Sam still held him there, and then suddenly the grip of Sam’s hands vanished and Shane could suck in a gulp of air. His lungs desperately tried to catch up, but Shane needed Sam’s cock in his mouth again and was already impatiently swallowing him down. Shane was breathing heavily now, but a few more strokes and Sam was shooting cum down his throat.

Sam’s hand slipped from where it was still twisted in his hair, down to Shane’s shoulder, and Sam leaned there for a moment as he recovered before straightening again.

Shane discarded the condom he’d never taken off, tossing it in the direction of the trash, and stayed on his knees for the few more seconds it took for him to jack himself off until he was blowing his load too, still catching his breath.

Sam, though, turned and put his hands on the wall, and looked at Shane over his shoulder expectantly. He supposed he could go for another round. Shane gracelessly hoisted himself off the floor, his knees stiff and deeply regretting their time uncushioned on the tile. He had to take a moment to bring back the sense memory of eyes watering, nearly choking on Sam’s cock, the burning feeling in his lungs, but it didn’t take long until Shane was hard enough to slip on a second condom and fuck Sam until they both came a second time.

 _Fuck_. Shane might be deeply messed up, but that was mind-blowing in a way he didn’t think was possible anymore.

Shane pulled off the condom and dropped it in the trash can under the sink as Sam finished rinsing himself off in the shower. He unceremoniously grabbed his shorts and yanked them on, doing up his belt before grabbing Sam’s jacket and holding it out to Sam without thinking about what he was doing.

Sam paused for a beat in the middle of pulling his powder-blue JojaMart polo back on and looked at the jacket and then up at Shane again for a second too long. Shane was suddenly uncomfortably aware that this was off their usual script by a mile. He dropped the jacket down on the bench next to Sam and strode away. He couldn’t get away from that place fast enough.

This spiral he was on right now was so excruciatingly _slow_. How long was it going to drag him along? Almost made him wish he'd just taken a fucking nosedive. More straightforward that way. Shane kept thinking there'd be a low point he'd reach that would finally be _the_ rock bottom, the sticking point that'd wake him up and force him to change. He wasn’t going to acknowledge _why_ that exchange with Sam felt like he should really be taking it as another rock bottom, but he hoped this was it.

Because it hadn’t been waking up back at his aunt’s ranch, or waking up drenched in water after passing out on the floor of his room, or waking up in his own puke on a cliffside, or apparently even waking up in the sad little clinic with the awful grit of charcoal in his mouth.

 _God_ , did he hope this was rock bottom.

(But how many times had he heard that one before?)

***

Sam was an angry person.

He wasn’t just angry a lot of the time anymore: it was who he was now. It felt like every one of his actions was colored with bitterness, resentment, frustration, exasperation, contempt, irritability... It seethed under his skin, all the way down into his bones, sometimes like a low simmer, sometimes a rolling boil, but always there.

Not that anyone could see far enough past the amicable, dependable exterior to be able to tell. Sebastian said to him once that he was grateful Sam had mellowed out the last few years. He got praise from his mom, even Mayor Lewis now.

If Sam didn’t seem as optimistic as he used to be, it was because he was maturing, becoming more responsible, being realistic. And now that the JojaMart was starting to get more business from neighboring towns since the warehouse went in, full-time minimum wage found a way to grind him to exhaustion day after day, so the incessant energy that no pill had been able to stifle didn’t have to inconvenience everyone else anymore either.

The more he corroded from the inside, the happier everyone seemed to be.

Sam still got a dark satisfaction sometimes thinking about what any of them would say if they knew what he did on the days he came home late. Fucking Shane in the JojaMart employee changing rooms had long since lost its novelty, though. It didn’t even feel like a rebellion anymore, it was just what he _did_. Fucking _Shane_ in the slimy _JojaMart_ showers.

Not that it wasn’t _good_ sex in the slimy JojaMart showers. It was like venting without even talking. Every day that Sam held himself together was so he could hold everyone else together; this was where he went to come apart. Sam would just get slammed against the wall and run over and over every angry thought that had been building up in his head that day until the rage finally boiled over, spilled out until he was empty. Under control again until the next time they did this.

He’d never meant for there to be a next time.

But honestly, he probably would have snapped by now without it. ~~~~

It was just too much to carry sometimes – being strong for his mom while his dad was away and then being strong for both of them when he came back different; looking after his little brother, making sure he got the innocent childhood he deserved; walking on eggshells as Sam tried to be any sort of approximation of the man his father was expecting him to be; talking Sebastian out of yet another depressive crisis; putting on a smile to cheer up Penny; listening to Abby’s rants about her parents that were honestly getting a little old at this point.

So many people relied on the happy, laid-back, dependable Sam. ~~~~

At first, he felt guilty for dealing with it by boning the heir apparent to the title of Town Drunk at their shared place of employment, but any more, he was way past caring. Sometimes Sam almost wished someone would catch them at it one day. Then at least _someone_ would know it was all just an image. See the cracks in his veneer. Plus, nothing brought his parents together like being ‘worried about Sam’.

This thought was interrupted by Shane’s thick fingers digging into Sam’s hipbone until it hurt. He savored the pain because feeling pain was feeling something that wasn’t anger.

Sam knew he used to feel excitement, wonder, at anything – even fucking Shane had once had its own thrill. But the last few times? The sex was still good and all, it just... wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing anymore. It was too easy to just get lost in heavy resentment or itching irritation without any actual release. Like he’d done it so often he’d built up a tolerance. God, that was probably exactly what happened. Sam reflected that he might be starting to understand Shane more than he was entirely comfortable with.

And then the lube was drying out and the friction was starting to burn a little – not badly, but enough to motivate him towards wrapping this up for the day.

Sam grabbed his dick, hoping jacking himself off would bring him over the edge. But if he was still going to leave here angry, at the very least he wanted enough of a distraction to ignore the mildew growing between the tiles.

“Harder,” he growled, and Shane was grabbing his hair and ramming into him, getting up to _just_ the right intensity to make Sam forgive Shane fucking with his hair.

Suddenly, Shane had slipped out and Sam heard the wet slap of his own skin against tile as he was shoved back against the wall. Shane ducked down and started blowing him – not an everyday thing, but not unheard of either. Sam had a feeling they were both aware that sucking dick was something they both still got some enjoyment from, so should be saved for when they really needed it.

Sam let his head drop back against the tile and closed his eyes, trying to feel nothing but Shane’s mouth surrounding his dick.

Shane pressed the head of Sam’s cock past the narrow opening of his throat as his fingernails dug into Sam’s ass. Sam heard himself let out a groan.

He looked down at Shane through half-lidded eyes. This was not Shane’s best angle, Sam thought uncharitably, as he took Sam deeper this time and swallowed him all the way down.

Maybe it was the way Shane was lingering long enough on the moments Sam’s cock was shoved down his throat that his face started to darken a beet red and his eyes teared up, but Sam suddenly had the perverse desire to see Shane stay there. Stay, mouth stuffed comically full, until he was choking for air, forced to take it as long as Sam wanted him there. Why not? Shane seemed like he was probably masochistic enough to be into it. ~~~~

Sam waited until the moment he got the gut feeling Shane was about to pull up and twisted his hand into Shane’s hair.

He caught the moment Shane realized he was meeting resistance against his attempt to resurface for air. Sam might have expected surprise, maybe even alarm, but when Shane’s eyes snapped up to his, a strange fiery hunger was reflected back instead. Sam had held him there probably barely more than a second, but the unfamiliar thrill was still reverberating through him. It came less from the sensation of Shane’s tongue sliding against his cock or throat tightening around the head than from the idea that Shane had been virtually helpless, and that Sam could probably actually hurt him if he tried. It was a colder, detached kind of pleasure.

Sam thought fleetingly that maybe this should be concerning, but the thought was quickly displaced by the rasp of Shane gulping down air. The anticipation flickering in Shane’s face as he held Sam’s gaze only solidified for Sam that they were doing that again.

He replayed the moment in his head. Yes, being held down like that had clearly turned Shane on at least as much as it had Sam. So. Turned out Shane was as fucked up as he was, he thought smugly.

Sam waited, searching Shane’s face for the exact right moment, could see his restlessness growing, looking up at Sam once, twice, before Sam was pinning down again. He made a game of trying to catch him when he wasn’t expecting it. Sam could feel the power going to his head. He kept nudging against the edge of how long he’d make Shane wait for it, and how long he’d make Shane take it.

And then the desperate way Shane had already gotten his mouth around Sam’s dick again after another break for air, almost embarrassingly quickly, mere seconds after Sam had felt his chest spasm for a breath had Sam’s vision going white as he came in Shane’s mouth.

All he could do was lean back against the tiles and watch Shane jerk himself off until he came. But seeing Shane still trying to catch his breath was somehow getting Sam hard again already.

Fuck.

Sam barely registered how ridiculous and needy he must seem with his hands against the wall, looking over his shoulder, but Shane was up again and reaching for the lube the second he noticed Sam.

Shane finished with a rough groan.

Sam flipped on the tap and let the just-under-lukewarm water splutter out over his face and down his front. He was just glad how clear it was running today; some days the rusty or yellowish color was just too off-putting and he’d be stuck with the feeling of sweat drying to his skin and clothes the whole way home.

He finished rinsing off the hand soap he always liberally helped himself to (no use letting free soap go to waste), twisted the tap off, and wrapped a towel around his waist. He’d rubbed a towel over his hair and had just pulled on his shirt again, when he was suddenly startled by the sight of Shane in his periphery. Sam had assumed he was already long gone, but there he was– holding Sam’s jacket out to him.

Sam was caught off guard. It was such a divergence from their usual routine, he could only stare for a second; his arm couldn’t connect to his brain fast enough to reach out and take the jacket.

With a sound of exasperation, Shane set it down again on the bench and stalked off.

Fuck if Sam knew what that was about. It was a little disconcerting – definitely disconcerting – but no. He shook off the thought that that simple gesture could be anything but that. This was him and Shane, Sam reminded himself. There was no reason for Sam to get all weird about Shane _handing him his jacket_.

Because they weren’t any more than a means to an end for each other, and that’s how they liked it.

Or, Sam hoped so at least. He didn’t know how much self-respect he had left to not keep coming back for more if it were any different.

(There was no reason for _any_ of this to be running through his head over a fucking _jacket.)_

By the time the stifling, breezeless night air was hitting his face, Sam was already thinking about next time.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't you hate terrible shower heads?
> 
> I hope I don’t have to say this, but don’t try this at home, folks. Choking’s one of those ones you gotta talk through and practice ahead of time. (For someone who doesn’t even go here (here being breathplay) I really wrote a whole fic of that, huh?…)


End file.
